Part 37 (1/2)

In 1840 M. Thiers went out of office, in consequence of a dispute with England about the Eastern Question. The only charge that his enemies ever brought against him affecting his honor as a politician was that of employing the Jew Deutz to act the part of Judas towards the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri; but for that he could plead that it solved a difficulty, and probably saved many lives.

During the Second Empire he kept much in retirement. At first he had thought that Prince Louis Napoleon, seeing in him the historian and panegyrist of the Great Emperor, would call him to his councils.

But he was quite mistaken. He could not--nor _would_ he--have served Louis Napoleon's turn as did such men as Persigny, Saint-Arnaud, De Maupas, and De Morny. When the _coup d'etat_ came, Thiers was imprisoned with the other deputies, the only favor allowed him being a bed, while the other deputies had no couch but the floor.

In 1869 there was a general election in France, which was carefully manipulated by the Government, in order that, if possible, no deputy might be sent to the Chamber who would provoke discussion on the changes in the Const.i.tution submitted by the emperor. Thiers thought it time for him to re-enter public life and to speak out to his countrymen. At this time one of the gentlemen attached to the English emba.s.sy in Paris had a conversation with him. ”For a man,” he says, ”of talents, learning, and experience, I never met one who impressed me as having so great an idea of his own self-importance;” but the visitor was at the same time impressed by his frankness and sincerity. Speaking of the Emperor Napoleon III., and foreseeing his downfall, he said: ”What will succeed him, I know not. G.o.d grant it may not be the ruin of France!... For a long time I kept quiet. It was no use breaking one's head against the wall; but now we have revolution staring us in the face as an alternative with the Empire; and do you think I should be doing well or rightly by my fellow-citizens, were I to keep in the background? If I am wanted, I shall not fail.” As he spoke, the fire in his eyes sparkled right through the gla.s.s of his spectacles, and all the time he talked, he was walking rapidly up and down. When greatly animated, he seemed even to grow taller and taller, so that on some great occasion a lady said of him to Charles Greville: ”Did you know, Thiers is handsome! and is six feet high!”

When the fall of the Empire occurred, in September, 1870, M. Thiers was in Paris; but when the Committee of Defence was formed, he quitted the capital, before the arrival of the Prussians, to go from court to court,--to London, St. Petersburg, Vienna,--to implore the intervention of diplomacy, and to prove how essential to the balance of power in Europe was the preservation of France. His feeling was that France ought promptly to have made peace after Sedan, that her cause then was hopeless for the moment, and that by making the best terms she could, and by husbanding her resources, she might rise in her might at a future day. These views were not in the least shared by Gambetta, who believed--as, indeed, most Frenchmen and most foreigners believed in 1870--that a general uprising in France would be sufficient to crush the Prussians.

Thiers knew better; his policy was to save France for herself and from herself at the same time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _LeON GAMBETTA._]

We already know the story. Gambetta escaped from Paris in a balloon, and joined Cremieux and Garnier-Pages, the other two members of the Committee of Defence who were outside of Paris. At Tours they had set up a sort of government, and there, in virtue of being the War Minister of the Committee of Defence, Gambetta proceeded to take all power into his own hands, and to become dictator of masterless France. It was like a s.h.i.+pwreck in which, captain and officers being disabled, the command falls to the most able seaman.

Gambetta had no legal right to govern France, but he governed it by right divine, as the only man who could govern it.

This is how a newspaper writer speaks--and justly--of Gambetta's government:--

”From the moment when he dropped, tired out with his journey by balloon, into his chair in the archiepiscopal palace at Tours, and announced that he was invested with full powers to defend the country, no one throughout France seriously disputed his authority.

His colleagues became his clerks. The treasury was empty, but he re-filled it. The a.r.s.enal was half empty, but in six weeks one great army, and almost two, were supplied with artillery, horses, gunners, and breech-loaders. The Lyons Reds had been told that they were wicked fools, and Communists and Anarchists ripe for revolt in Toulouse, Lyons, and Ma.r.s.eilles had been put down. The respectables everywhere rose at his summons, anarchy and military disobedience quailed.”

The fortunes of war forced Gambetta and his Government from the banks of the Loire to Bordeaux. There, at the close of January, 1871, Jules Favre arrived from the Central Committee in Paris to announce, with shame and grief, that resistance was over: Paris had capitulated to the Prussians; and it only remained to elect a General a.s.sembly which should create a regular government empowered to make peace with the enemy.

For a few hours that night the fate of France hung trembling in the scales. Thiers was in Bordeaux. He was known to think that France could only save what was left by accepting the armistice.

Gambetta was known to be for _No Surrender!_ Which should prevail?

Would the dictator lay aside his power without a struggle?

Gambetta rose to the occasion during the night; but here the histories of Thiers and Gambetta run together; therefore, before I tell of what happened the next day, let me say a few words about the personal history of Leon Gambetta. He was only thirty-three years old at this time, having been born in 1838, when Thiers was forty-one years of age.

Gambetta's birthplace was Cahors, that city in the South of France stigmatized by Dante as the abode of usurers and scoundrels. His family was Italian and came from Genoa, but he was born a Frenchman, though his Italian origin, temperament, and complexion were constantly cast up against him. In his infancy he had been intended for the priesthood, and was sent, when seven years old, to some place where he was to be educated and trained for it. He soon wrote to his father that he was so miserable that if he were not taken away he would put out one of his eyes, which would disqualify him for the priestly calling. His father took no notice of the childish threat, and Gambetta actually plucked out one of his own eyes.

In 1868 he was a young lawyer in Paris; but his eloquence and ability were known only at the Cafe Procope to a circle of admiring fellow-Bohemians. On All Saints Day, 1868, the Press, presuming on the recent relaxation of personal government by the emperor, applauded the crowds who went to cover with funeral wreaths the grave of Baudin at Pere la Chaise. Baudin had been the first man killed on Dec. 2, 1851, when offering resistance to the _coup d'etat._ The Press was prosecuted for its utterances on this occasion. Gambetta defended one of the journals. Being an advocate, he could say what he pleased without danger of prosecution, and all Paris rang with the bitterness of his attack upon the Empire. From that moment he was a power in France. In person he was dark, short, stout, and somewhat vulgar, nor was there any social polish in his manners.

Not long after his great speech in defence of the Press, in the matter of Baudin, Gambetta was elected to the Chamber by the working-men of Belleville, and at the same time by Ma.r.s.eilles. He entered the Chamber as one wholly irreconcilable with the Empire or the emperor.

His eloquence was heart-stirring, and commanded attention even from his adversaries.

When, on Sept. 4, 1870, the downfall of the Empire was proclaimed, Gambetta was made a member of the Council of Defence, and became Minister of the Interior. He remained in Paris until after the siege had begun; but he burned to be where he could _act_, and obtained the consent of his colleagues to go forth by balloon and try to stir up a warlike spirit in the Provinces. He was made Minister of War in addition to being Minister of the Interior. From Nov.

1, 1870, to Jan. 30, 1871, his efforts were almost superhuman; and but for Bazaine's surrender at Metz, they might have been successful.

Gambetta raised two armies,--one under General Aurelles des Paladines and General Chanzy; the other under Bourbaki and Garibaldi. The first was the Army of the Loire, the second of the Jura.

When the plan of co-operation with Bazaine's one hundred and seventy-five thousand well-trained troops had failed, and the Army of the Loire had been repulsed at Orleans, Gambetta with his Provisional Government moved to Bordeaux. Thither came Thiers, returned from his roving emba.s.sy,--a mission of peace whose purpose had been defeated by the warlike movements of Gambetta's armies.

Gambetta in the early days of his dictators.h.i.+p wrote to Jules Favre: ”France must not entertain one thought of peace.” He sincerely believed any effort at negotiation with the Prussians an acknowledgment of weakness, and he fondly fancied that a little more time and experience would turn his raw recruits into armies capable of driving back the Prussians, when the experienced generals and soldiers of France had failed.

And now we have reached that terrible hour when news was received at Bordeaux that all Gambetta's efforts had been useless; that Paris had consented to an armistice; that an a.s.sembly was to be elected, a National Government to be formed; and that to resist these things or to persist longer in fighting the Prussians would be to provoke civil war.

No wonder that Gambetta and Thiers, both devoted Frenchmen, both leaders of parties with opposing views,--the one resolved on No surrender, the other urging Peace on the best terms now procurable,--pa.s.sed a terrible night after Jules Favre's arrival at Bordeaux, Gambetta debating what was his duty as the idol of his followers and as provisional dictator, Thiers dreading lest civil war might be kindled by the decision of his rival.

Hardly less anxious were the days while a general election was going on. Bordeaux remained feverish and excited till February 13, when deputies from all parts of France met to decide their country's fate in the Bordeaux theatre. Notabilities from foreign countries were also there, to see what would be done at that supreme moment.